Traffic congestion on highways and other roadways has increasingly become a problem, particularly in most large metropolitan areas. For example, traffic congestion is not without an economic impact. For instance, a recent mobility study by the Texas Transportation Institute estimated that the cost of congestion for an average driver in the San Francisco Bay Area during 2002 was about $800 per driver per year, where drivers also wasted an average of 92 hours. This report also estimated that in general more than half of the travel delay is due to incidents such as accidents, obstructions, disabled vehicles, and related problems.
Further, it is largely acknowledged that travelers in the US and other countries are poorly informed of incidents and congestion impacting their route. According to Research Report PRR-2000-07 of University of California in Berkeley, which was commissioned to study an incident reporting system, radio reports are the primary source of Information for travelers. Radio reports are often delayed, as many radio stations report traffic every 10 to 20 minutes.
As radio reports are limited to announcing a few incidents and are provided for a large area, their relevance to an individual traveler is generally limited.
For various stages of traffic reporting on the radio, human processing and interpretation of the data is required. As congestion and traffic density increase, and as an increasing number of traffic monitoring systems are being developed, traffic and transit data are becoming richer and more complex. There is also an increased need for speedy dispatch of the data. As such, human processing of the data is becoming ineffective, and automated processing and understanding of traffic data desirable.
A number of systems and methods have been described in the prior art for alerting travelers of transportation problems.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,792,803 entitled “Traffic Monitoring and Reporting System” issued Dec. 20, 1988 to Madnick et al. teaches a traffic reporting system for broadcasting messages to receivers inside vehicles, wherein the receiver has a plurality of activatable buttons, each corresponding to a particular zone of an overall geographic area. If a user presses a button, a continuous message will be announced relating to traffic conditions in the specific zone.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,095,532 entitled “Method and Apparatus for Route-Selective Reproduction of Broadcast Traffic Announcements” issued Mar. 10, 1992 to Mardus, includes a transmitter and at least one vehicle-mounted receiver decoding traffic announcements with comparison to route information stored in the receiver.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,182,555 entitled “Cell Messaging Process for an In-Vehicle Traffic Congestion Information System” and issued Jan. 26, 1993 to Sumner, discloses a system for gathering and formatting data at a central location, transmitting the data, and presenting it to drivers.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,845,227 entitled “Method and Apparatus for Providing Shortest Elapsed Time Route and Tracking Information to Users” and issued Feb. 9, 1996 to Peterson, discloses a system for providing shortest elapsed time route information to users, wherein information of desired origin and destination combinations is received from the users in a central processor. Communication between the users and the central processor is preferably by cellular telephone.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,209, 026, entitled “Central Processing and Combined Central and Local Processing of Personalized Real-Time Traveler Information over Internet/Intranet” issued Mar. 27, 2001 to Ran et al., discloses a system wherein an Internet utility receives information about a proposed trip. The utility calculates at least one route, and provides periodic updates of information related to the route.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,253,146 entitled “Network-Based Traffic Congestion Notification Service” and issued Jun. 26, 2001 to Hanson et al., discloses a system for calling a subscriber if their customary route is congested. The server tests additional streets having geographic coordinates nearby, searching for an alternate route. The server calls the subscriber as it finds a better route.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,353,795 entitled “Method and System for Matching an Incident to a Route” and issued Mar. 5, 2002 to Ranjan, discloses a method and system for depicting an online map of a route, along with any incidents on the route.
A system available on the Internet as TrafficWarn™, dispatches traffic alerts to subscribers. Subscribers are required to choose routes for receiving alerts. Once a route is chosen, alerts are received for the entire length of the route, which can result in the receipt of unwanted and confusing information.
The Sigalert™ system, also available on the Internet, dispatches traffic alerts to subscribers. Subscribers are permitted to select portions of highways.
Although the prior art methods are designed to provide notice to travelers of important information, they generally fail to provide a satisfactory solution to the problem of informing a large population of the travelers as soon as, and every time a problem is known.
Typically, prior art systems for publishing traveler information do not qualify data and therefore routinely publish outdated information. In addition, prior art systems typically publish the exact list of information from a data source without providing necessary additions or correcting omissions. For example, such systems do not predict or publish an expected end time if such data is not explicitly available. In addition, some prior art systems will continue to publish potentially outdated information, if for some reason the supply of fresh data is disrupted. Experience in the development of the invention disclosed herein has shown that disruptions in data can occur frequently. Thus, prior art systems are not enabled to determine whether the impact of an incident has expired.
Therefore, a need exists to provide an improved, more efficient and more automated system for management of incident and congestion data. Preferably, the system should be capable of matching to active or passive subscribers, and providing information through various mechanisms and on various devices including cell-phones and other similar devices which may be ported from one vehicle to another. The system should provide data that is reliable, complete, timely, and preferably concisely stated.